


get a rise

by flowermasters



Category: Luke Cage (TV)
Genre: Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Misogyny, Jealousy, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Canon, Prison Sex, Recreational Alcohol Abuse, shades is a little shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-19
Updated: 2018-07-19
Packaged: 2019-06-13 04:32:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15356328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: Shades and Che reminisce in Seagate. Things get a little tense.





	get a rise

**Author's Note:**

> Bitterly jealous!Comanche is real and valid and I love him. I wanted to write that but haven't quite worked up the nerve (yet) to write an AU or really deal with canon at all lmao.
> 
> Warnings for: sexual content, relatively mild discussions of past BDSM, some serious flirtation with it in present, discussion of past recreational alcohol usage, some canon-typical internalized homophobia and misogyny. Basically, Shades is a big ball of the stuff and Che isn't much better off; y'all know the drill.
> 
> Feedback is greatly appreciated!

They scored the hooch from a guy named Tommy, two commissary water bottles’ worth; he’d given it to them as a peace offering, clearly hoping they wouldn’t rough him up for talking shit in the yard the other day. Not a bad offer at all—the lure of a good buzz for very little work is too strong to pass up. They’ll still rough him up, of course. Can’t let anybody get comfortable in here, not even themselves.

“This shit tastes like piss,” Comanche says, wrinkling his nose.

“How you know?” Shades says, taking an easygoing sip like it’s fucking iced tea and not something the same color and taste as motor oil.

Comanche rolls his eyes. “I can use my imagination. And we’re probably going to catch something from these filthy ass bottles.”

“Now you’re worried about cooties?”

“Nah,” Che says. “Fucking—cholera or some shit.”

Shades laughs, and so does Che. Nasty shit or not, Che’s no punk, and this is free hooch. Strong, too. He’s big enough that it’d take a lot to get him really feeling it, but Shades won’t complain if Che has some of his.

Shades takes another slow swig, plastic crackling slightly in his grip. They’re sitting on the bottom bunk, side by side, although it isn’t really necessary since they’ve each got a bottle to themselves. They keep their voices low, more out of habit than out of respect for the guys in the neighboring cells; no guards are going to come sniffing around, either, so they can get comfortable. Che isn’t going to kick Shades out, though. Shades’s easy weight against his side reminds him of way back, of times when they couldn’t afford good alcohol or sometimes any alcohol, so they stole or mooched wherever they could. They’d share a forty or some beers between them, sitting on a bed or couch or front stoop somewhere, till they were each too drunk to get anywhere any other way than by slinging an arm around each other and walking together like they were in some kind of three-legged race.

“What’re you thinking about,” Shades asks, mockingly curious in the darkness. “How Tommy probably poisoned our asses?”

Che huffs. “Thinking about all the times I had to carry your ass home, back in the day.”

Shades scoffs and shifts his leg, knee knocking into Che’s accidentally-on-purpose. “At least as many times as I watched you puke all over yourself, all over the train, all over me, you name it.”

It’s a fair point, although he doesn’t remember ever throwing up on Shades, but alcohol or an ass-whooping might explain that. Che’s always had a habit of misreading the signals his body gives him when he’s drunk, ignoring the hot saliva of nausea or the blurred vision of an imminent blackout. He’s embarrassed the hell out of himself more than once, usually in front of Shades, but that hardly counts after all this time. A memory strikes him, and he winces. “You remember that summer—”

“When all we drank was that spiced rum shit?” Shades says.

Not good rum—cheap rum, so cheap Che can’t even remember the label, only that it tasted like air freshener spray. But they were barely nineteen and sharing a bedroom in a tiny apartment that had no less than four people living in it at any given time, usually with others passing through. One of their boys had the hookup, worked at a shipping facility or some shit, so they always had a bottle on hand, something to kill the dead time between hustles.

“You threw up down the fire escape one night and the people below us threatened to come up and beat the shit out of us,” Shades says, supremely amused.

“I don’t think I was sober a day that summer,” Che says, taking a sip of the hooch, which tastes slightly less offensive now.

“Me, neither,” Shades says. He pauses, maybe reminiscing, then says, “You remember that girl Tasha?”

Comanche blinks. “We know a Tasha?”

Che can’t really see it in the dark, of course, but he knows Shades is rolling his eyes. “The one I went around with, that summer. Best tits you’ve ever seen.”

Che takes another sip of hooch, this one long. Of course he remembers Tasha; she was there that same summer, one of the half dozen people coming and going from that shithole apartment. “The one that lived down the hall,” he affirms, after a beat of silence that he lets go on for too long. “I never saw her tits.”

That’s not exactly true; he’d glimpsed them, a handful of times, but seeing is not the same as looking. The division still feels important somehow.

Shades gives an amused huff. In the darkness, Che can make out him toying with something, maybe the round bottle cap, between two fingers. “You hated her.”

Comanche takes another pull, too close on the heels of his last one, and grimaces. This is—not where he thought this conversation was going to go. “The hell makes you say that?”

“Because,” Shades says, head cocking thoughtfully, “I was jerking off a while back, thought of her, and the first thing I remembered was how much you always hated her.”

Che swallows. He and Shades have talked about their dicks before, of course, more times than he could ever count; this isn’t even the first time they’ve lived together, although it is the first time neither one of them can come and go freely—or at least, as freely as they’d like. He knows Shades jerks off here, in this room, usually right above him. But Shades’s dick is never something that has been brought up in the same context as Che before—even if he is talking about Tasha, some girl they haven’t brought up in years.

Comanche never hated Tasha, or at least he’d never had a real excuse to. But he knew the first time he saw her—when he walked into the apartment one afternoon and found her leaving, her expression breezy, nonchalant as if she belonged there—that Shades was going to fuck her, if he hadn’t already. She was fine, tall and curly-haired with, yes, great tits. She was doomed from the start.

He remembers going into their room and finding Shades at the dresser they’d taken from Che’s mom’s place, digging through the overstuffed top drawer. “Who was that?” he’d asked.

“Lives down the hall,” Shades answered. “Asked if I’d seen her cat.” He met Che’s eyes in the mirror and raised his eyebrows, so that Comanche had to laugh.

Che keeps letting pauses drag on for slightly too long; he scrambles to think of something to say. “You ain’t stuck on Tasha, are you? It’s been damn near twenty years.”

“No,” Shades says. “But she was—memorable.”

Memorable for both of them, if only because Comanche hadn’t been able to escape it that entire summer. The first night Shades fucked Tasha, he’d brought her through the living room while Che was in the kitchenette; Shades was wearing his sunglasses, of course, but Comanche knew he would’ve winked if he had the chance. After that she was always around when they were, and even when she wasn’t, she was just down the hall. Maybe Che had hated her, a little bit.

“She was into some kinky shit,” Shades says. “I ever tell you that?”

Comanche takes another sip, purely to moisten his dry mouth. The bottle is getting lighter in his hand. He’s not drunk, couldn’t be, but the hooch is sitting warm in his stomach. “Nah,” Che says, as Shades takes another drink, too. “Don’t think so.”

“She was older than us, you remember?” Shades says. Che does. Even though they were grown themselves and Tasha was probably less than two years older than them, Shades had spent much of the summer peacocking, so yes, he remembers. “Not by much. But she knew stuff.”

Comanche doesn’t really want to, but he bites anyway, because Shades clearly wants him to. He’s still playing with that damn bottle cap, all casual. “What kind of stuff?”

“She used to tie me to the headboard and shit,” Shades says, sounding amused, like this is some passing joke. “Blindfold me. One time she gagged me.”

“Goddamn, B,” Che says, genuinely a little startled. When Shades said _kinky shit_ , Che assumed he meant she liked it up the ass, or maybe she wanted him to slap her around or something. This, somehow, is vastly different. “I didn’t realize she had it like that.”

“Yeah, man, she was into it,” Shades says, laughing a little. “Really into it. And I was sprung.”

“She pour candle wax on you or something?” Che says, still thrown but able to follow along, to crack jokes that are—on the surface—at Shades’s expense. “Whip you?”

“Nah,” Shades says, shifting, his leg bumping Che’s again. “She spanked me, though. With a hairbrush. Hurt like fuck.”

He doesn’t sound displeased, just idle, vaguely amused. Che should burst out laughing; the part of him that’s adept at this, at playing things off, dodging the question, reminds him that he should laugh. Shades is probably telling him this expecting him to grin, crack a few jokes, and move on. Maybe Shades is telling this entire story for Che’s benefit, like it’s a gift, like he can laugh at this. _See how sprung I was for this girl?_

When Che doesn’t say anything at all, Shades adds, “We never did any of that in the room, so don’t bitch about it. That was always at her place.”

The first several times he’d brought her over, Shades asked him to hit the bricks or Comanche left on his own; there were times that summer, though, when Shades hadn’t asked, and Che hadn’t left. Most of those times they were all drunk, or at least Shades and Che were. Other times Che was too proud to go to his mom’s for the night. Sometimes he was just too stubborn—consumed with the same angry, loathing fascination he’s known all his life—to get up and leave.

“Wasn’t going to,” Che says. It’s more of a grunt than anything, an effort at disinterest, only halfway genuine. The idea of Shades being tied up doesn’t do much, just sort of makes him think of Shades sitting cuffed in the back of a police vehicle—but the idea of Shades being spanked is, unfortunately, one that lingers, if only for its novelty. The same ass Che has to see every day in the showers being struck—not hard, by a brush, but with a firm, playful slap. Goddamn it.

There’s a little pause, and Comanche can feel Shades watching him. “She asked if she could put her fingers in my ass once,” Shades says, conversationally. Goddamn it, _goddamn_ it. “While she sucked me off. Said she could fuck me like that.”

Asking feels like admitting defeat in something, if only because that’s what Shades clearly expects him to do. His tone is too light, too _can you believe that shit?_ Che can’t make his reply a taunt, though, just: “You let her?”

There’s a pause. “Like you said,” Shades says, “I was drunk most of that summer, too.”

When Comanche doesn’t say anything, just polishes off the last of his bottle, Shades adds, “Only the one time, though.” His tone is calm, but Comanche knows him, knows a backpedal when he sees—or more accurately, hears—one. He’s let Shades down, somehow; they’re just shooting the shit, but Che hasn’t held up his end of the bargain, hasn’t kept the jokes coming like Shades must have wanted.

Shades is still playing with the bottle lid, twisting it between his thumb and index finger where his hand rests lightly on his thigh. Che lets his gaze travel up the length of Shades’s arm to his shoulder, up to his neck and then his face, even as he’s very conscious of the warmth of Shades’s thigh pressed lightly against his own. Shades is lounging, back against the wall and legs spread comfortably wide, but there’s space enough on the bunk for both of them to sit casually without touching. Their shoulders are brushing, too, their faces not even a foot apart in the darkness of their cell. Shades looks back at him, his expression still, composed.

“Why are you telling me all this shit now, man?” Comanche asks.

Shades just looks at him. “I always thought you didn’t like her because you knew, somehow. About what we got up to.”

“You thought I was judging y’all,” Che says, sort of flatly. “Or you.”

“Maybe,” Shades says lightly. He tilts his head back ever so slightly, appraising. “But you never said anything.”

“Because I didn’t know,” Che says, resisting the urge to look away. What he doesn’t say, _I didn’t care_ , hangs in the air; he wonders if Shades knows that he can’t say it, even now.

Shades pauses to take a sip. Only now does Che notice the grimace he makes at the taste, the little twitch of his mouth as he swallows. So all that cool shit was just an act. “Why, then?”

“Don’t play stupid with me, ‘Nan,” Che says. The weight of the words makes his voice sound heavy, even when he feels less heavy by the second. Instead he’s growing more alert, hyperfixated on the feeling of Shades’s thigh against his own. “You’re a lot of things, but stupid ain’t one of them.”

There’s a thousand things he could’ve said just to get through this. _You’re my homeboy, my oldest friend, and you were always kicking me out over some bitch._ Not just Tasha, either; she was just the one who stuck around the longest. The others came for a night or two, maybe a week, then went, after one or both parties had gotten their fill. Comanche had watched them all out of the corner of his eye, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t know why that was. Tasha was cool, from what little he remembers of interacting with her, and Shades had liked her, but that wasn’t enough for Che. Couldn’t be.

Shades looks thoughtful. “Maybe I am,” he says, as he caps the bottle. “’Cause I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You drunk?”

Che grits his teeth. He needs to move, get up, he needs to get away, but mostly he needs Shades to just be fucking real with him. Let this act go. There’s a hundred other things about that summer that they could’ve talked about. That was the year they really became Rivals. Most of the people they knew in that time are dead or long gone, locked up or just plain gone. Tasha left after a couple months, moved someplace else, and by the next summer Shades was locked up at Sing Sing. It’s the last summer Che remembers feeling any different from the months before or after, and he’d wager it’s the same for Shades.

But no, they’re talking about _this_ shit. It’s like Shades searched and searched and finally found a bruise Che hadn’t even realized still hurt.

“Lie to yourself all you want,” Che says finally. “But don’t insult me like that.”

Shades must be spoiling for a fight now because he opens his mouth to reply almost instantly, but Comanche doesn’t let him get there; he kisses him, hard, mostly to shut him the fuck up. Shades goes still, a kind of full-body stillness that would have Che running for cover if he didn’t know Shades so goddamn well, better than he knows himself sometimes. They’re not going to fight—not tonight.

“You—” Shades starts when Che gives them both a chance to breathe.

“Don’t,” Che says, and lifts a hand to clasp at the side of Shades’s neck, thumb brushing against his jaw. “Just—don’t, alright? Enough bullshit.”

He can feel it when Shades swallows, and something about that sends heat from his stomach out to the rest of his body, filling him with that good, heady shit. He kisses Shades again and Shades grabs at the front of his shirt with one hand, tightly enough that he might tear it. Che’s not sure if it’s intentional or not, but it’s a good enough excuse to shove Shades over sideways onto the bunk, then to pin him on his back.

“Fucking—get off me,” Shades says, shifting and grunting under him, their legs tangling and knocking the pillow to the floor. Shades tries to free his arms, and Comanche takes the opportunity to pin them above his head. With his hands occupied, Che can’t support as much of his weight, so the length of his body presses down against Shades. Shades is getting hard, harder already than Comanche is, but Che had already guessed as much. Like the back of his hand.

“You knew what you were doing,” Che says. It comes out a little too soft, even as he’s pressing Shades’s hands down by the wrists so hard that it must hurt. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Shades just looks up at him, stubborn, breathing heavy. Then he jerks, hard, making the mattress springs creak as he almost bucks Che off. Shades isn’t weak, and Che almost loses his grip, but Shades—doesn’t quite follow through. He goes limp at the very last second, giving up before his strength actually fails him. He’s pinned, in more ways than one. “Fucking do something about it, then.”

Che hitches his hips once, just testing, realigns their pelvises for a better grind. Then he lifts up slightly, moving one hand away from Shades’s wrists. Shades doesn’t try to break loose again, though he’s coiled like a spring, muscles taut from head to foot. He stays where he is, even as Che reaches down and clumsily yanks open the bottom buttons of his jumpsuit, tearing at clothes until they’re both just free enough to rub against each other, skin to skin. That feels important, somehow, that they really touch. Only then does Shades squirm a little, blinking fast a few times, but still he doesn’t move to free himself, even when he can.

Comanche rolls his hips again, then again—clumsy, but it’ll do, _goddamn_. Shades’s hips are so bony, he’s leanest there, and thinking this makes Che want to hold him tighter, make him hurt, even as his chest aches like something’s squeezing on his heart. Then Shades starts working his hips, too, and every other hurt but the drag of friction can wait, for now.

Shades’s gaze has gone unblinking, if only because he seems a little dazed, mouth falling open so he can puff out hot breaths. Che leans down and kisses him again, even though it fucks up the quick-and-dirty rhythm they’ve settled on. _Pay attention to me._ “You liked what she did to you?”

Now Shades blinks, licks his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he says. “I did. I loved that shit.”

Maybe the hooch is working on them, because surely only then would Shades readily admit to something like that, that he liked being made weak. That he _could_ be made weak. But then, he isn’t even fighting this anymore, and somehow Comanche doesn’t think that’s got much to do with hooch, feels it in his bones.

Shades doesn’t ramble, ever, but he keeps talking now, his voice gritty and low. “That whole summer I’d have, like—rope burn, on my wrists and my neck and shit, and nobody ever noticed. You never noticed.”

Che swallows, but he can’t help making a noise, a grunt under his breath. “You wanted me to?”

Now Shades says nothing; maybe he can’t, because his mouth is falling open again, his entire being too caught up in trying to get off. Che feels like he can’t breathe, and his weight must be suffocating Shades a little, but he keeps going anyway, even when he can barely speak. “You like this?”

He needs to know, even though it should be pretty clear by how hard Shades is right now, how easily he fell into this. He’s found a desire of Shades’s and tapped into it, but Shades has found something, too, a feeling Che’s been sitting with for a long time. _I could give you everything you want, if you'd just let me._

Shades doesn’t answer, just husks out _fuck_ and comes, gaze blind even as he looks up into Che’s face. It’s that, the momentary helplessness in Shades’s expression, naked need, that makes Che lift his hips up again and pull himself off with a few quick jerks, coming hot over the patch of Shades’s stomach uncovered by his uniform. The relief is so profound that he has to seek Shades out in order to weather it, finding the nook between Shades’s neck and shoulder and tucking his face there.

He stays there until the head rush passes and then after, until his breathing evens out and post-orgasm drowsiness sets in. The weight of him that isn’t borne by his knees digging into the mattress rests on Shades, but Shades can take it. He’s still got his hands up over his head, although Che is barely holding on anymore, one big hand merely resting over Shades’s crossed wrists. His other hand, sticky, is tucked against Shades’s ribs. Shades’s neck is warm and strong and smells like sweat and faintly of laundry detergent. Che wants to kiss him there, to bite and suck bruises into his skin, not ones that hurt but just little purple marks. It’s an urge that comes from so deep he doesn’t have a name for it or any idea of how to understand it, so he doesn’t try.

“Don’t fall asleep on me,” Shades says then. “My ribs’ll give out.”

Che laughs under his breath, then lifts his head. Shades looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes, his expression lazy, smirking. He looks sleepy and well-fucked and Che kisses him without thinking, even though he’s not sure how much more kissing Shades will tolerate. Only one way to find out.

When he lifts himself off Shades, they both grimace slightly at the sticky peel-apart of skin and fabric. Che isn’t too concerned, overall. They’re familiar faces in the laundry room—have to be, since the nature of their work for Rackham regularly has them replacing bloodied towels and uniforms with clean ones. He wipes his hand on the coarse blanket and wedges himself sideways between Shades and the wall. Shades doesn’t immediately get up, which is a surprise; instead he shifts to give Che more room beside him, which somehow isn’t a surprise at all.

Shades adjusts his buttons and then folds his arms back to make a pillow for his head. He seems not to care how satisfied he looks, and it gives Che a moment’s pause. He knows Shades so well that sometimes he forgets that Shades knows him, too, can play him like a fiddle. But it only lasts a moment. As scary as it is to be known, it’s _Shades_. He’s the only one who ever could. Come looking for one of them and you’ll find the other, always.

Shades lies there for a moment longer, then shifts, reaching down with one arm to feel about on the floor next to the bunk. He comes up with his bottle, uncaps it, and takes a sip.

“How can you stand that stuff?” Che asks, watching him.

Shades looks over at him. “It’s good shit,” is all he says, grinning at the look on Che’s face. He passes over the bottle and Che finishes it off, their fingers brushing over the plastic. Shades goes into it easy when Che takes his wrist and tugs him back down onto the mattress, and when Che kisses his neck, Shades just tips his head back for more.  


End file.
